How Easy Bake Ovens Work

Easy Bake Ovens are as iconic as a toy can get, as American as apple pie or baseball. Learn all about these light bulb cooking, working ovens that endanger children to this day. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from How Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Ramsey over there
the husu, which means it's time for Stuff you Should
Know Nostalgia Edition Colon t s hodgment. Yeah, we've done

(00:28):
a few toys. Um plato, Uh, slinkys right, what else?
Well does a boomerang count as a toy? Uh, it's
away alive, mate. Um, we've done tons. We did silly putty,
silly putty, we did um uh, you know a bunch

(00:51):
that The balls, Yeah, the balls the balls episode How
Balls Work. They round and they bounced. We said balls
like a million times in that episode. Uh. Yeah, this
one's kind of cool though. The easy bake oven, which
I never had one. Did you ever have one in
your home? I don't think so. No. I don't think
my sister had one either, although I was a pretty

(01:12):
tubby kid, so it's possible that my mom was like,
make sure your brother doesn't know you have one of those,
Do not feed your brother or anything from there. But
it's interesting that this is one where uh sort of
a very simple idea and you never can tell what's
gonna hit toy wise, nothing super complex about this other

(01:32):
than you could literally bake food and sort of pretend
to be an adult in the kitchen. That's that was
the basis of it. Being an adult. That was kind
of Kenner's thing. And Kenner, the people who made Star
Wars toys, were the ones behind this, and they were
very much into um toys that like let kids pretend

(01:55):
they were growing ups. Yeah, that was their bag. Yeah,
I have a new neighbor. Actually, shout out to Rick Kathy. Hey, guys,
where they really got into your skin? Huh what? Rick
and Cathy got a shout out on the podcast and
their new neighbors. Jeez. Yeah, because he worked for I
was talking to him and I was like, he seems
like a good guy. He was like, what you know,

(02:15):
what do you do? Ricky's retired? Now, what did you do?
And He's like, I was a toy and action figure
designer for Kenner And I was like, whoa what? Years?
He came on after his first The first thing he
worked on was the Tim Burton Batman movies. And he
stayed on for a long time, like his whole career,
Like after they were sold and everything pretty neat. That

(02:36):
is very cool. Yeah, good for him. Yeah, so he
still does wonderful uh sculpture. So just go after Rick
Watkins art online and then check it out. I'm going
to check it out. But I mean, Kenneda is such
a big deal to like two people, our age and
of many ages. But I didn't realize that they didn't

(02:58):
realize their origin as a company. Remember that we talked.
We did a whole Action Figures episode, remember, and we
talked a lot about Kenner. Was that a two part
episode or was it just like an hour and a
half long? I feel like it was just long. It
was very long. But um, Kenner almost didn't do the
Star Wars ones if I remember. But for us at least,

(03:19):
that put Kenna on the map. What I didn't realize
is that Kenner was already on the map as far
as toys go. And one of the ways that they
got there was from the Easy Bake Oven, which debuted
in November of nineteen, right around the time that John
Kennedy was shot. Yeah, but Kenner had been around since
the nineteen forties. Um Albert Philip and Joseph Steiner Um

(03:40):
formed the company after, as legend goes, one of them,
I saw a bubble you know maker bubble wand or
whatever you call him, and it was like, hey, if
I could do a gun that shoots bubbles, we might
be onto something. And that was our very first product,
is the bubble Mattic gun, and then whatever lesson twenty

(04:01):
years later, the easy Bake oven. Even though as we
learned today and yesterday, there had been toy ovens since
like the Victorian days, yes, like really really dangerous one
like real real little ovens like wood burning, pellet solid
fuel stoves made of cast iron that were sized down

(04:21):
for little kids to you. Yeah, basically like here's the
oven that can kill your parents. We'll just make a
smaller one they can kill you. Yeah. Um yeah. So
the children's play oven functioning play oven um history very
kind of closely treks the real oven history, right. Yeah,

(04:42):
Like when there were cast iron wood burning ovens, there
were kids versions of them. As they as real ovens
moved into electric ovens, there were kids versions of them apparently.
Um Lionel the train the model trainmakers, they made some
in the thirties. Also, we want to give a shout
out to Lisa Hicks and the people at Collectors Weekly

(05:04):
for a great article we also used for this episode two.
But um, in the thirties there were electric ovens. By
the forties or fifties, I think there were fiberglass insulated ovens.
Electric ovens. It was just like a small oven for kids,
but they were ovens. They were extremely dangerous. And um,

(05:28):
Kenner had this really great idea. And the reason that
this idea came about at Kenna to begin with. So
apparently Kenner was really big on having like ideas could
come from anywhere. Anybody in the company flowed an idea
and people would listen, and they had like regular meetings
where you know, there were bull sessions. Maybe they ordered

(05:48):
some like chowel Maine or something like that. Everyone rolled
up their sleeves and relaxed and and spat out ideas.
And one of the salesman from Kenner came back in
from the field and said, you know what, I saw something.
I saw some pretzel vendors keeping their pretzels warm on
the street using a lightbulb. What if we used a
lightbulb to heat up an oven for the little kiddies.

(06:12):
And somebody, I think Charles House Ralph House, well, Norman
Shapiro was that gentleman, and then Ronald House. Ronald was
the big time inventor for Kinner, who had a couple
of like really big products under his belt, and he
was like that that's an ace's idea. That's exactly how

(06:34):
he talked. Probably everyone hated him for it, but he
was really good at inventing toy so they had to
put up with that. Yeah, but Kinner's deal, like you
were saying, was find things that mimic adult things. And
that's like kind of I bet like kids are gonna
dig that stuff, and they did from like and kids
still do little toy lawnmowers and toy bulldozers. And I

(06:55):
mean Ruby's got a little cleaning set with like a
duster and a dust pan and a mop. Been shed
she o c D no, But I mean all the
time she will say, you know, come on, daddy, let's clean,
and she'll hand me him up. That's a little low
c D. Well, No, that's good. Then, Yeah, I like
where she said it. Did you have one of those
um plastic safety razors so you could shave next to

(07:16):
your dad? No? I did, but I was I think
a lot of boys are pretty obsessed with shaving before
they have whiskers, and I think I heard that they
would actually stimulate hair growth. And I was about to say,
I remember being worried about that, Yeah, because I didn't
have I had a pretty I mean, looking at me now,
you would never know, but I didn't have a lot

(07:36):
of facial hair going on until well into college. Was
it like lacking or did it come in patchy just
a little bit, sort of like my brother is now.
He just stayed in that phase where your brother's got
a perfect chiseled face. Well, I know that's because he
doesn't have a beard, but um Scott can grow a
pretty decent gotee now, but I don't. I don't think

(07:57):
he could grow the full beard, but his his was.
We were both spotty, like a little bit above the lip,
a little bit on the chin, the one part just
kind of traced to line up to your eye from
around from under your nose. Yeah, but I mean it
was sort of a family thing. We're not harry dudes.
We don't have very hairy legs or it is odd
that you have such a full beard, like I don't
have hairy arms or anything like that. Your your beast.

(08:21):
I don't know if beasts is the right word, but yes,
I'm a little Harry. You're a Harry guy. My chest
hair definitely plucks out from under my shirt. Have you
ever done any like a laser or anything like that?
Good for you? No, I'm just I'm Harry. No, I
mean you're normal. It's not like you're Robin Williams. He
was hairy. Yes, he was, God rest his soul. Yes, indeed.

(08:42):
So back to the ovens. So, um, the idea has
been put out there now by Norman Shapiro, Yes, yeah, okay, so,
and it was taken up by Ronald House and this
was this was huge and groundbreaking because again there were
safe there were um unsafe ovens for kids that have
been around since the nineteenth century. What these guys had

(09:03):
just happened upon was the way to make another unsafe
oven seems safe to parents. That was That was it.
That was the genius of this idea. That is what
made easy bake ovens take off. What they had figured
out was that if they used a light bulb as
the heating element, and believe me, a lightbulb can can

(09:23):
heat up an oven. Um, yeah, up to three fifty,
which is a common baking temp. Yes, from a light bulb,
and actually at first as we'll see a pair of
light bulbs, but the fact is they're light bulbs and
parents are familiar with light bulbs. They don't seem weird
or scary. It's not a wood pellet. And the fact
that it's not like a heating element like in an

(09:45):
actual oven, it's just a light bulb. That is what
they used to convince parents that this was a safe
product that they could buy for their kids. It was
a genius idea, it really was. And like you t
s a second ago, the very first model, and if
you look at the very first one, it doesn't really
even look like an oven. Well certainly the new one
doesn't either. NOA, I did go online. I was like,

(10:08):
maybe I should get one of those. But they're ugly
now they I'm sorry to the person who designed them. Yes,
I'm glad you said it. They're ugly little ovens. Yeah,
they should kind of go back to looking more classic.
I think it would be my advice. Um, But they
used to one incandescent bulbs at first, one over the

(10:28):
top and another under the bottom. Obviously they were trying
to get an even heat because you're baking things right,
And they very wisely designed this thing um so that
the actual oven part was basically inaccessible to the kid
on either side. So just imagine a box. Um okay.

(10:49):
Oh man, here's the very It's my favorite thing when
you try to describe something. Let me see if if
I close my eyes, it works. Uh. Imagine a box okay,
and then coming out from either side of the box
or a couple of little little arms. But the arms
are half arms, and they're rectangular and hollow, and they're

(11:11):
actually openings. One opening. You slide in the uncooked thing
that you want to bake into the heating area of
the oven, let it bake, and you push it through
the other the other side, the cooling chamber, and then
it comes out the other arm. Everyone Josh has had
his eyes close that entire time, and it worked. I
really painted a great picture in your mind's eye. M

(11:34):
hm yes, uh yeah, So that's what's what's going on.
You had the two bulbs, um. And in fact, let's
go ahead and take a break there, Okay, nice litl cliffhanger.
When we come back, I'll redescribe the easy bake oven again.
It sounds good. Alright, we were at one bulb, right, yeah,

(12:10):
I'm sorry, No, we were at two bulbs so long ago,
I couldn't remember. I know there was a full add
a go. But then what they did was they figured
if they just engineered this thing to distribute heat and
whole heat a little better, almost like a convection of him. Yeah, exactly,
like a convection of him, that they could go down
to one bulb. Yeah. There was a dude named Charles

(12:34):
hold On I really wanted, Yeah, Charles Cummings, Charles one
bulb Cummings. Yeah, that's what he was known as. Charles
Cummings was a designer at Kenner, and I think in
the late seventies he designed the interior of the oven
so that the bulb one bulb created confection current, so
it cooked just as well as two bold but you

(12:54):
just needed one um And he owns the patent to that.
Oh really, which that's the way it should be. Yeah,
he was the desire. He came up with this pretty
rare too, I think kind of course, I'm sure had
an exclusive license to it, but I'm sure he got
like a decent amount of money from that license. Agreement
that is the way it should be. He also created

(13:15):
the patent um or he held the patent for the
add on popcorn maker that you could put onto the
easy bake oven. Too good for him, good for you,
Charles Cummings, Charles one bulb Cummings. He probably lives on
top of the mountain somewhere. It's on a mountain of money.
Uh so, all right, you're down to one bulb thanks
to Charlie Cummings. They initially wanted to call this in

(13:38):
nine when it was two bulbs with a debut. Yeah,
right out of the gate. They wanted to call it
in November of sixty three the Safety bake Oven, because
they really wanted to drive this home was that it
was super safe, and the regulatory bodies were like, you can't.
You haven't even sold one yet, Like, we don't. We're
not sure if this is going to kill kids. You
burned a dozen monkeys during the product testing trial. Oh

(14:01):
that's so awful, um, but you can't call it that
yet because we don't know yet whether it's truly safe.
Go ahead and sell them, but just don't still call
it safe the safety bake And so they're like, well,
what about easy and they're like, are we still talking
about this? We're done with you, go away and um
they so they were like, okay, fine, we'll call it
the Easy Bake Oven. Then, and they sold it as
the Easy Bake Oven and it sold out immediately. They

(14:25):
sold it. So November is right before the Christmas season,
actually in the Christmas season, I think even back then,
and they made a little more than half a million
units and sold them all like before Christmas. Yeah, for
which is expensive. That would be about a d thirty
dollars today. No, yeah, that's a that's an expensive toy. Wow.

(14:45):
And if you look at the thing. I saw a
picture of one that's for sale on eBay for really cheap.
I think it was like thirty bucks or something. Really
it was unused in the box, still needed to be assembled.
But if you look at it, you're like, that thing
looks like a death trap. It looks like the four
pinto of children's toys from the sixties, you know, like
the sharp metal edges. Yeah, you're like, like, that's what

(15:07):
it looks like, like like the baby strollers we were
pushed around. Yeah, remember that that Dana Kroyd snls get
from years ago. With the dangerous Christmas toys, and there
was one called the Bag of Glass, so great. Uh,
and that's all it was just a bag of shards
of glass. So yeah, they sold a half a million
and then they're like, we gotta make a lot more

(15:29):
of these for next year. Yeah, because this is back
at a time when toys didn't do that very often.
You know, it's like every Christmas now people are like, well,
what's the toy we should go fight other parents for?
Tell us? Yeah, because I'm training in the ring. This
is when it right. This is when it happened organically,
when you put out a toy and if it became
like the fight worthy toy, that was a few and

(15:50):
far between. Think the easy Bake oven was the fight
worthy toy right out of the gate. Yeah. So in
year two, I think they made about one point five
million sold all those And here was here's the little
bit of genius from Kenner is Uh, anytime you can
sell a supplementary product to the big thing, then you're
really cooking with Gasically Gilette Razor model, I think it

(16:14):
was King Gilette who came up with that. Yeah. So
what they did was they sold uh mixes you know,
these little instant mixes that you would pour and it
would make a little creddit cake. And they had twenty
five of these at first, and we're selling those like
crazy because if you're a kid, If if you're a kid,
you want all those, you're like, well, I haven't tried

(16:35):
the strawberry cake yet. Plus also, it's not like you're
putting this in like a book like some baseball cars
and you're like, well, I've got this one out and
you eat that thing and you need another thing to
it and you poop it out. Yeah, and you're not
gonna eat the poop again. You're going to go buy
another one. And that was the genius of the other

(16:56):
genius idea of this whole thing. There was a third
genius idea to Kenneth did this so right? Not just
no the advertising so remember this is kids emulating grown ups.
That was their thing, um it. They advertised not just
two kids through like Archies comics, but they advertised directly

(17:18):
to their parents too. There were ads for the Easy
Bake Oven, on I Love Lucy and on Hogan's Heroes.
According to This Collector's Weekly article, and in these ads,
if you look at a lot of old ads and
even some of the newer ads too. For easy bake
oven it's a mom and a daughter and the parent
is like, oh, this is something we can do together.

(17:40):
I love baking. It's basically my whole life I live in,
and I'm a woman, so I would love to share
that with my daughter. Maybe she's old enough to have
an easy bake oven herself. And that definitely helped propel
sales for sure, because it's not just kids going on
an easy bake oven, it's the parents going that'd be
a great thing to do with my kid. Yeah. And

(18:01):
of course, as people evolved and people became more woke
over time, even though that word wasn't used um enlightened,
maybe it became a bit of a problem with gender
roles and like this is for moms and daughters their
pink and that's what you're supposed to do is be
in the kitchen baking for the men. Yeah, I mean
very famously, the easy bake ovens always ended with the

(18:23):
disclaimer like this toy is not for boys. Yeah it
didn't really, but essentially it was like that was this
that was what was coming through. And the weird thing
is is far as as like legendary and iconic a
toy as the easy bake oven was as gender roles
and um, yeah, as gender roles evolved, I mean this

(18:46):
was we're talking like the early seventies when this really
started to become like a thing. Yeah, the easy bake
oven did not evolve with it right, as we will see.
It wasn't until the like early two thousand's that they
started to like respond to that kind of thing. And
I saw an ad for two thousand fourteen not a
boy in sight, all girls and um it just dancing

(19:08):
around like the girliest easy bake oven you could possibly imagine.
They actually got more girly as time went on and
more girl focused. Um as gender roles went on, which
is really weird to me. Not just non responsive but
almost like no, we're going the opposite way. Yeah. And
in early two thousands Hasbro who uh you know, they

(19:31):
bought out Kenner, eventually makers of the classic snoopy snow
comb machine. I never had one of those. You have
one of those? No neighbor did, okay, Um, but you
got to eat some of that sweet, sweet sugar ice.
There was nothing like the taste of I think the
cherry one. I can't remember, but it was just the
greatest snow cone you could possibly have. And that's until

(19:52):
you had a shave dice later and you're like, oh,
this is a lot better still. Number one reigning champ
really Number two is blue raspberry slush put. Yeah. See,
what I would always do was um slurp that sweet
liquid and that would be left with just some faintly
colored kind of just ice. Oh yeah, no, I know.
It was the problem with it for sure, But if
you did it right and you just kind of let

(20:14):
it settle, you got, you know, through the nasty stuff first,
when you got to the bottom, then you got to
the true, like hyper hyper dense snow cone experience. Yeah.
I could never do that. I'd still have problems regulating
my like hot fudged to ice cream ratio when eating
a Sunday. I just won't even do it anymore. So
you do all the hot fudge first, and then you're
left to some crutty ice cream. That's I mean, that's standard,

(20:37):
cretty delicious ice cream, right, This ice cream that some
people around the world would kill for his cy. It
doesn't have any more fudge. Dude, I've been on a
fifteen year campaign to convince Emily that vanilla ice cream
is like a legit flavor. I think she's she still
thinks that vanilla ice cream is just like unflavored ice mill. Yes,

(20:58):
it's like it's the one without the flavor added. Right now,
vanilla is it really delicious? It is? It is. It's
subtle vanilla bean ice cream like a true flex so good.
So in early two thousand, they finally, like you said,
tried in a very ham fisted way to get boys
involved with the the que you easy bake queasy bake

(21:21):
Is that what it is? Took me a second to
because Q uses separate word. So okay, now, so the
queasy bake oven and the mixer rader for you boys
you can make mud and crud cakes and the lar
delicious cocoon cookies and you know, not like, hey, just
bake something good because anyone can bake. Yeah, anyone can bake.

(21:44):
And they didn't like the girls don't don't use that one. Yeah,
it was it was only boys that showed up in
these ads. They're like, we really need to get boys involved.
How can we do that? Oh, we'll make one specifically
four boys. That's like they're making cruddy cakes. I mean,
I know they're just trying to sell stuff, but when
in these meetings, in these marketing meetings that you just
can't help but think they're it's like a bunch of

(22:05):
like eight five year old men. It's our it's our Senate. Yeah,
it's in there right there, like screaming and pounding and
yelling at each other about the idea of like selling
this to boys. Oh man, Well, after that, I feel
like we should probably take a Yeah, we'll go to
our Senate chambers and regroup right after this. Alright, So

(22:43):
in seven, the Easy Bake up in a selling like
uh hot cakes literally General Mills bis Kenner uh, And
they did a couple of genius things. They they partnered
because they were General Mills. They had no problem because
they owned Betty Crocker, well I assume um launching Betty
Crocker branded mixes. And then later on they got into

(23:05):
licensing deals with McDonald's and Pizza Hut because here's the thing.
You can bake anything in an easy week oven because
it's just a little oven. Yeah, you can make pizza,
and you can make you don't have to buy these mixes.
You can just bake cookies that you made from scratch. Yeah,
there's like a lot of recipes online easy bake oven recipes.

(23:26):
Yeah that actually don't taste like garbage, right, so um. Yeah.
They did have a huge line of mixes though, and
they sold more than a hundred million of them over
the over the years. That's how they get you. But
I mean they there there were recipes for mixes for
candy bars, pecanan brittle, popcorn, bubblegum. You can bake your

(23:47):
own bubblegum. Interesting, it is interesting. I would have tried
that for sure. I want to see bubblegum come out
in like a brownie pan. Yeah, I'd be like, I
want some of that bubbleguming. Had a cotton candy machine,
now that I remember what. It would just spin sugar
and you would, oh, I know what they do. Yeah,
I wanted one. That thing was probably dangerous. It was
probably like a nuclear centerfuge. What what was interesting about

(24:11):
those are fascinating to me was like the cotton candy. Um,
oh it's not called it's like not the web sugar
or something like that. Um. Yeah, I want to say web,
but that's not either. You it's not really visible in
the machine. Yeah, but when you stick in the little cone,
it just builds up on it like it's like it's

(24:31):
just coming out of another dimension into this one, like
coming out of a spider's But it's awesome to see
a pink and pink and blue spiders. But man, I
had to go out yesterday two. Uh. I still have
my pickup truck then, because I just kept it because
it was paid for, and I still moved and hall
stuff occasionally had to move. Something justified to me. I

(24:53):
had to move something yesterday and I went out and
that was the most beautiful, huge spider web from a
tree down attached to the rear tailgate of my truck,
like chuck with this big spider right in the middle.
And I was like, oh, man, I just felt so bad.
I didn't know what to do. So you just put
in reverse and pretending nothing you didn't see anything. Now.

(25:13):
I actually plucked it off a little by little because
I want to ensure his safety. And the web just
goes crumbling down into a long, you know, skinny string,
and he climbs right up to the tree and I
was just like, I'm really sorry. He's like, oh, I'm
sure you are to see you and he tried to
spit venom into my eyeball, Like what do you what
do you need your truck for? And you're like, I

(25:34):
gotta go get peanut butter. He's like, oh, good, thank
you for ruining thirty hours of my work a giant
vat of peanut butter that would only fit in my truck. Um,
all right, so let's let's fash forward here too, Uh,
the modern times in two thousand seven, the Energy Independence
and Security Act, when the government said by two thousand

(25:56):
twelve lightbulbs have to increase their efficiency by twenty five percent,
So bye bye incandescent bulb. Yeah, so let me just
say something. Let me set that up to over the years,
the easy Bake oven and just remained a steady sellar
for Kenner and then has Bro, and the design had
been basically the same and went from two bulbs to

(26:16):
one bulb. But it was this closed box where the
heating element was, where there was a slot on the side.
Remember I went through the whole thing, pushed it in
and it came out the cooling chamber on the other side. Um.
But really the design was the same. The outward look changed,
like it went from the weird its own thing to
the late seventies and early ages and started to resemble
a microwave. And then in in response to this change

(26:40):
in light bulb requirements, Easy Baked did a redesign in
two thousand and six, and for the first time ever,
the Easy Bake Oven actually looked like an oven, like
a stove, had little like fake burners on the top,
it looked like a stub, and it was actually a
front loader to where there was a like a slot

(27:02):
in the front of the Easy Bake oven and that's
where you put the thing in, and that's what you
actually pulled it out from, too, and it went right
into the heating element um And they replaced the light
bulb because again so long light bulb because of the
energy act um. With an actual heating element, a ceramic
heating element like an oven, it was an oven. So

(27:25):
they made an oven. But then when they made the oven,
they redesigned this thing so that you could put your
fingers right into the oven while it was baking at
its hottest temperature. And of course kids immediately started doing that.
How did they How did that one slip past? No idea?
I mean, that just doesn't make any sense at all.
So in the end, I think, what what close to

(27:45):
two kids ended up with like second third degree burns,
one partial amputation of a finger. Yeah, because kids would
get their fingers stuck in it, right, and it's just
and then some kids got their fingers stuck in it
while it was hot, and yes, they were getting huge burns.
So um, Hasbro was like, well, we'll do a recall,

(28:06):
and they recalled five thousand, I think ultimately a million
of these things. They recalled. First they tried to say,
here's a little fixed Yeah, here's a retrofitted piece. It's
really easy to snap it on, and I'll solve them everything.
And apparently it did solve everything. They're like, why didn't
you make it that way to begin with, right, But
most parents were not, Like they didn't have their ears

(28:27):
out that there was a recall of their easy bake
oven and so their kids the kids kept getting burned
and and finally Hasbro was like, just bring them back.
So there's a recall of a million Easy bake ovens
from that two thousand and six redesigns for them, Like
if that would have ruined the easy bake oven, that
would have been a big, big, deal. So what they

(28:48):
did was they temporarily went back to an old design
featuring a light bulb too, while they redesigned it to
the new version. So uh, then they came out in
two thousand and eleven with that that really ugly designed
what's called the Easy Bake Ultimate Oven. I'm looking at
it now. That things. Yeah it does. It looks terrible.
It's horrible. It's super It looks like it's on the

(29:10):
go or something like that. I don't like it. It
looks like a weird toaster of it. Yeah, but it's
sort of. It looks like it's trying to look futuristic
and modern, which never ends up looking like that. No,
it doesn't. But they also made it pink and purple,
super girly that ads were girl targeted. Yet there's flowers
on it. Again they were like, nope, this is for girls.

(29:32):
Boys don't play with this. So in two thousand, I
think two thousand thirteen, there was a girl named um
McKenna Pope who is just a hero of heroes. She's amazing.
I saw an interview with her on CNN. She's just

(29:54):
so like self possessed and intelligent and like well spoken,
but also like a kid now where she's a kid.
She's just amazing, one of those clearly reincarnated um. And
she went on she started a petition to get Hasbro
to make a gender neutral version of It's Easy Bake
Oven because her little brother UM like to bake, but

(30:17):
realized that the Easy Bake Oven was for girls. She
wanted him to be able to bake, so she said, Hasbro,
why don't you make one this gender neutral? And got
something like fifty thousand signatures for her petition, and Hasbro
came out with a new version of the Easy Bake
Ultimate Oven, which was just a black version of it,
black and I think silver. I'm surprised it wasn't like
our brush stainless model to emulate, you know kitchens. Yeah,

(30:41):
she's she's probably almost twenty years old now. Yeah. One
of what she's doing, mckinnipope or are you out there,
she's some sort of like consumer protection lawyer all that
probably so, I hope. So, uh, two thousand six they
go into the National Toy Hall of Fame the same
year that disastrous redesign. Yeah, they they got in just

(31:01):
under the wire. Can't take it back. I'm trying to
look here and they're from their very on website some
of the landmark years. Uh, and it is kind of
funny that emulated the styles of the time, unless they
were just doing pink. Like in sixty nine they premiered
the avocado Green. The very next year was Harvest Gold.
It's very good metallic p You say that a lot

(31:24):
in our else. Um. Oh, they had a potato chip maker.
Do we mention that No? V? Three, the easy Baked
Potato chip Maker And um. Then in seventy eight they
finally started putting a fake digital clock on it that
always read twelve thirty, not for twenty. You see that

(31:47):
a lot in as a joke and like the pothead joke. Yeah,
but like you'll see an alarm clock ad and like, uh,
skymall or something, and I'll say four twenty because the
publishers paying attention, they get it, doesn't know or they
don't care. Sure. I remember years ago when we used
to have a lot of illustrations on how stuff works

(32:09):
and had two in house illustrators that I won't name,
and remember one of them drew a like a park
scene for me, and the tree clearly had a marijuana
leaf like embedded in it and I was like, hey, man,
you can't do that, and he was like, oh, I
was completely an accident. I was like, man, I wasn't
born yesterday. I've seen a pot leaf before. I mean

(32:29):
I thought it was funny, but like, you know, yeah,
I couldn't do that. Do you got anything else? I
don't think so. Easy bake oven, mac and cheese you
can bake. Oh. In two thousand three they they introduced
the real meal oven and you could That's when you
could do like French fries and pizza and mac and
cheese and stuff. I think that was the predecessor to

(32:51):
the ceramic heating element that they eventually the easy bacon
in two thousands six. Good stuff, good stuff. If you
want a nice blast from the past, just type in
like easy bake oven commercials. There's one from that was
just perfect. Was it rad? No? It was pretty rad? Okay,
it was like Carpenter's era Gotcha, which is not rad

(33:14):
but still lovely. Yes. I love the Carpenters, me too.
Um Well, if you want to know more about easy
bake ovens or the Carpenters or the Snoopy snowcomb machine,
just go onto the internet. It's a vast repository of
stuff like that. And since I said that, it's time
for listening to mail. Hey guys, UM a freelance writer
who works remotely. So I've been writing and traveling the

(33:36):
world for the past year and a half. It's been wild.
Since I've been traveling alone, it can get lonely, But
from Mexico City the Bali to Tokyo, you guys have
been with me, keeping me company, making me laugh, teach
me all kinds of cool facts. As a content writer,
also feel a connection to y'all. We both have to
research seemingly mundane topics sometimes and discovered the cool interesting

(33:57):
things about them, present them in a palatable way of
People sometimes laugh when I'm telling that I'm writing something
like the history of the egg McMuffin or the best
month to buy a mattress. But I just point to
your podcast as a sterling example of how gems and
surprises lie within even the most unassuming topics. Thank you, Yeah,
I agree. Have you guys ever considered doing a show

(34:17):
on digital nomatting. I know it's becoming increasingly popular as
more companies embrace remote working. I'm in a cafe and medellin, Medaine,
Columbia right now, and there are five digital nomads tapping
away in their laptops as we speak. They would beat
me up if they knew I just refer to them
as digital nomad. The future is location independent. I say,

(34:40):
thanks again for being so awesome. It's a short term
dream of mine to digital nomad over to a country
where you're doing a live show by you guys a drink.
If you do read this on the air, please give
a shout out to Mark Alexander, who insisted that I
keep listening to you guys, even even after I was
initially slightly turned off by all of your sides and
off tracking happens to a lot of people, And that's
funny because we had a lot of those today. You

(35:02):
know that reminds me of a totally unrelated story. Uh
he she says, now, I very much learned to appreciate those.
He would burst into tears and I would too, So
thank you, Mark Alexander for turning on your friend. Maria
Christina Ladonde, thanks a lot, beautiful name. Yeah, I'm sorry
laalone day leon da Maria Christina Laonde, um, and I

(35:28):
hope that your buddy did just burst out into tears.
That'd be amazing, pretty neat. Thanks for that email. If
you want to get in touch with this, you can
find us on the web but Stuff you Should Know
dot com. Check out our social links there, and if
you like, send an email to Stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

(35:52):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
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